Page 71 of The Hang Up
“Look, hon,” Holly said, resting a hand on her arm. “Maybe it’s not over just yet. With Jason, I mean.”
“It’s over,” Miriam muttered, and wished that weren’t true. But he’d had two weeks to change his mind, to call her up and tell her he’d made a mistake. That there was room enough in his life and his heart for more than just his family.
“Here’s the thing,” Holly said. “Sometimes you’ve just gotta let guys figure things out for themselves. To take a few steps back and realize how shitty their lives are without you.”
“And what if he doesn’t?” She hated how small and sad her voice sounded.
Holly gave her a gentle smile and put an arm around her shoulders. “Well then. You’ve turned into quite the outdoorsy bitch. I hear you’re pretty good with a paddle. We might just have to beat the man to death.”
Miriam laughed in spite of herself, not feeling too comforted, but not feeling a whole lot worse, either.
CHAPTER15
“We’re all looking at the same numbers here,” Rex Rutherford grumbled, frowning down at the paperwork in front of them. “As the accounting director for Urban Trax, I think I speak for all of us when I say we’ve got to make a tough call here and trim a little fat.”
Jason stared at the guy, not imagining any context in which Rex Rutherford would speak for him. The man prattled on, and Jason forced himself to let the jerk finish. It was the polite thing to do. The professional thing. Still, he couldn’t help wondering what Rex’s face would look like if someone slammed his necktie in a car door, revved the engine, and dragged him down the street.
Jason glanced down at the red First Impressions notebook he’d been carrying around with him for the last few weeks. He’d jotted copious notes in countless meetings, but the one he kept coming back to was the first line he’d written when Miriam gave him the notepad in the first place.
Figure out how to beat corporate assholes at their own game.
He looked up as the door to the conference room swung open and a waiter filed through pushing a bell cart. Across the boardroom table, the chairman gave a nod of approval. “I hope you all don’t mind,” Jack Wainswright said as he gestured the waiter to begin serving,“but since we’re already running an hour over schedule, I took the liberty of ordering lunch for us.”
As the executives pushed aside laptops and spreadsheets, the waiter replaced them with napkins and plates topped with artistic-looking mounds of watercress. Jason watched as the young man set a dinner plate in front of him and pulled off the silver cloche with a flourish. How much had this meal cost? And when the hell had words like “watercress” and “cloche” entered his vocabulary?
You know damn well when.
He spread his napkin across his lap and watched for the board chairman to pick up his salad fork before following suit. The greens were delicious, tender and flavorful with a delicate vinaigrette, but the whole thing tasted sour in the back of his throat.
“As I was saying,” Rex continued, stabbing into his own salad with more force than necessary. “These layoffs are unfortunate, but a bit of collateral damage is just part of doing business.”
Jack Wainswright finished chewing his salad and sighed. “It does seem like the layoffs might be the simplest way to go.” The chairman looked pained, and it was clear he didn’t take the decision as lightly as Rex did.
The COO nodded and looked grim, or did a half-assed impression of a guy trying to look grim. It was tough to tell as he chewed his bite of pecan-crusted salmon in a lemon dill sauce. “It’s about being fiscally responsible,” Darrin Johnson added as he forked up another piece of salmon. “Cutting the dead weight, so to speak.”
Jason stared at them as rage pooled hot and acidic in his gut. Okay, it might be more than rage. It was rage mixed with heartache mixed with an overall disgust with corporate culture mixed with maybe a little more heartache. There was probably some watercress in there, too, but he wasn’t upset about the watercress.
“Well,” Jack said, “if no one has anything else to add, I think we should go to a vote and?—”
“Actually, I have something to add.”
Jason set his fork down, even though he wasn’t aware he’d made up his mind to speak. But everyone was staring at him now, and as he straightened the lapels of his jacket, it occurred to him he had a helluva lot to say. “This is bullshit.”
Jack blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Be professional,Jason reminded himself.Beat them at their own fucking game. Miriam showed you how to do that.
Jason cleared his throat and tried again, careful to keep his elbows off the table and his napkin balanced on his lap. “Do you realize that in the last fifteen minutes, you’ve referred to our employees as ‘dead weight,’ as ‘fat’ that needs to be trimmed, and my personal favorite, ‘collateral damage’?” He put air quotes around the word, hoping to convey his disdain for the terms. He looked around the room and saw the entire board staring at him.
Several appeared to be considering whether he’d gone off the deep end, but most looked curious. Guarded, but curious.
Good.
They’d hired him to be the goddamn CEO, so it was time they got a taste of how he really ran a business. How hewantedto run this one. An image flashed in his brain, all those employees showing up tomorrow and learning they wouldn’t have jobs next month. That they couldn’t buy birthday gifts or health insurance or groceries for their kids. He couldn’t imagine.
“How about instead of referring to them like some sort of burden, we think of our employees as human beings,” Jason said carefully. “As valuable assets. We have an exceptionally trained workforce here at Urban Trax, and it’s about time we start appreciating that. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to retrain new workers when you’ve fired your existing ones?” He looked around the room, daring someone to answer. “Eight times as much as it costs to just take care of the ones you already have. It’s a piss-poor—it’s apoorbusiness decision is what it is.”
They were all still staring at him, but he was seeing more thoughtful looks. More looks of respect. He tried to remember if he’d ever seen that outside the ski slopes and bike trails. It felt really fucking good to see it in the boardroom.
